


The Small Things

by Cumbermarvel (UglyJackal)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Fluff and Angst, M/M, Prompt Fill, inspired by the doctor strange discord, stephen has insecurities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-15
Updated: 2018-11-15
Packaged: 2019-08-24 05:18:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16633694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UglyJackal/pseuds/Cumbermarvel
Summary: Everywhere he looked, all he saw was judging eyes and whispered rumours. And no fancy suit could deafen the voice in his head that said, “they’re talking about you”.





	The Small Things

**Author's Note:**

> For the lovely luna-ephemere, who requested this fic on kofi
> 
> Not beta-read (excuse any missing words or whatever)
> 
> Buy me a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/stephenstrangestan

It was a rather disturbing mission that befell the Avengers that morning. Rumours of a murderous doctor at a hospital ran riot through the hallways, clinging to the curtains and creeping out of the woodwork. Shadows of a doctor with a syringe in his hand haunted the off-white walls. No one trusted anyone.

The plan was to go to one of the doctor conferences that was being held that evening. A chance for the doctors to mingle and relax a little, even though they were looking twice over their shoulders and keeping a firm distance away from anyone else. It wasn’t quite “sexy bait” but Tony insisted that looking good would inspire some of the other doctors to talk to whoever they chose to go.

And now they were discussing just who that should be.

‘Well, the obvious choice would be Strange,’ Steve said, ‘he was a doctor, he knows this sort of scene.’

Stephen looked up at the sound of his name, fear spiralling in his stomach. ‘Uh… no…’ he stuttered, ‘I thought you said we had to look good, and I… well…’ He looked down at his hands, looked at the ugly cracked skin, looked at the raw train tracks that followed the path down his bones.

Bruce snorted. ‘You  _ do _ look good, Stephen,’ he said.

The sorcerer looked towards the scientist with shocked blood blooming on the blade of his cheekbones. ‘Um… well, I… thank you, but…’

‘No “but’s” about it,’ Tony interjected, ‘you’ve gotta do it, Stephen, you’re clearly the most attractive in the room.’

‘Oh, just because you’re dating him,’ Natasha said with a roll of her eyes.

The engineer looked back at her with fake shock on his face. ‘I would never be so biased,’ he cried.

While the discussion of Tony’s preferences went on in the background, Stephen had retreated into his head. He had never thought himself particularly attractive, but had never thought the opposite either. He had always just been him. Girls came and went, as did boys, but it wasn’t until he overheard a few offhand comments about his appearance that his confidence in his looks started to wane. He saw the flaws in the mirror, saw the bizarre structure of his face, saw the lankiness, the too-long limbs. He saw all of it. But then he became a surgeon, where people were too busy looking at their mother, their father, their sister, their brother to notice any abnormalities on the doctor’s face. He could hide his lack of a chin behind a surgical mask, and his large forehead underneath the cap. And then he lost all of those hiding places when he crashed his car. Then his hands became as ugly as the rest of him.

And now? Now what was he? Did he still feel ugly? A little, but Tony had taken that in his hands and crushed it. He would tell Stephen how beautiful he thought he was, even when he didn’t realise he was doing it. They were small comments, small looks, small smiles; everything was small, and Stephen had gotten used to noticing the small things, had perhaps gotten too caught up in looking at them in the mirror.

So now, when faced with the prospect of going to a conference with the intention of looking good? It seemed like an impossible feat. His face hadn’t been designed to be handsome.

Tony sat down beside him, one arm wrapped around his shoulders. He recognised hesitation and fear when he saw it, even when it happened to be buried underneath the many layers of the sorcerer’s stony mask that he often wore. ‘You’ll be fine, babe, I promise,’ he said with a smile.

The sorcerer frowned. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to wear though,’ he said, ‘I don’t have any suits in my wardrobe and I certainly can’t afford one.’

‘Who said anything about paying for anything?’ 

‘Anthony, no, I can’t ask-’

‘Sure you can!’ Tony said, ‘I don’t mind buying my handsome boyfriend a suit, especially if it’s gonna make him look even better than he already does in jumpers that are too big for him.’

Stephen smiled and looked down at the beige woollen jumper that was miles too big for his scrawny frame. The sleeves were folded over his hands, which he must have subconsciously done to hide the scars. ‘But suits aren’t exactly cheap,’ he protested.

‘Good, nothing but the best for my gorgeous boyfriend,’ the engineer said with a wide grin.

Stephen sighed in defeat as he came to the realisation that he wouldn’t be getting anywhere with Tony.

* * *

 

‘Well?’

‘Holy shit, babe.’

Even the tailor looked impressed at the fine cut figure that Stephen made with the embrace of the suit. It was a deep black colour that looked as though it could reach out and swallow a man whole, with a subtle trim of dark purple that hung onto the frame of the cloth. Underneath the suit, he wore a purple shirt that hugged his chest and showed off the endless hours of training that he had thrown himself into. The black trousers - just as black as the suit - made for a delightful view when Stephen’s back was facing Tony. Somehow the whole look made Stephen’s eyes a little brighter and his cheekbones a little sharper, and it certainly did  _ wonders _ for his ass.

He looked more handsome than ever.

‘Is it good?’ the sorcerer asked, eyebrows crunched as he looked himself over in the mirror.

‘It’s more than good,’ Tony said, ‘it’s… you look incredible!’

‘Really?’

‘Yes! You’re a stunner in casual wear, but fuck,’ the engineer chuckled, ‘we need to get you more suits, baby.’

Stephen smiled, cheeks warming under the praise. ‘Thanks.’

And it was then that he first felt the gentle ripple in his chest, the sensation of a flower stretching out its ruby red petals, the feeling of the aurora borealis smoothing its multicoloured hands across the Alaskan stars. It was then that he felt the first fingertips of confidence.

And those ripples did not stop at the first. Each of the Avengers and the Guardians around the compound stared and paid him compliments. And these things didn’t stop as he walked around the conference in the new suit, in fact they upgraded from compliments to wolf whistles and second glances. And he felt so  _ good _ about his appearance, something that he hadn’t felt in several years.

The ripples grew into waves; the singular flower that had opened its petals turned into a meadow of roses and sunflowers, and the palms of the polar lights turned into fists that pummelled into him, flooring him with the surge of overwhelming confidence. For once, his ballooning ego that could be popped so easily with a sharpened pin was not held up in front of his face as protection; for once, it was solid; for once, the pressure point was covered and protected from needle-sharp comments.

Unfortunately, the one thing that he wasn’t feeling so good about was the fact that the doctors were almost impossible to prise any sort of information from. All down to “patient confidentiality”, which surely shouldn’t stand if the patient that Stephen was asking about was dead. But, as he knew from experience, doctors were one of the most stubborn people to ever walk the earth.

He was met with shaking of heads and apologies falling from untrusting lips. Everywhere he looked, all he saw was judging eyes and whispered rumours. And no fancy suit could deafen the voice in his head that said, “they’re talking about  _ you _ ”.

Of course they were talking about him; he was the great Stephen Strange. The skilled neurosurgeon with his perfect record. The foolish man that had crashed his car. The hospital patient that barely ate. The rich patient that had undergone more surgeries than he count. The doctor that couldn’t hold a scalpel. The case study that had disappeared without a trace. The sorcerer that had saved the world. He was a tabloid’s dream come true. Nothing more than a conversation piece between harsh mouths. His pain was not sympathised with; it was mocked - for all the things that he could no longer do, for the glasses that he would smash, for the knives that could not make straight cuts, for the handwriting that had turned completely illegible. And he hated every inkily-published word.

And he should have been used to the gossip, to hearing his name in stranger’s mouths. But he wasn’t. And he wasn’t sure if he would ever be used to it. He lived alone, he worked alone, he was not a household name like Iron Man or Captain America. The existence of the mystic arts were kept a deadly secret, held close to the chests of the Kamar-Taj students like a winning hand in Poker. And yet Doctor Strange, seen so often with Tony Stark, was a name that was slowly creeping into the headlines of tabloids.

He excused himself from the gaggle of cooing middle-aged women with a nervous smile and a forced laugh, shaking hands clenched behind his back. He navigated his way to the nearest bathroom - not particularly caring if it was the men’s or the women’s,  _ he just needed to get out _ .  Once in the safety of a stall, he leant heavily against the door as he locked himself inside. With heavy breaths, he bit his lip and shut his eyes to centre himself. He was fine; he was okay; he could do this; he just had to find another way of finding anything out.

And then he grinned as his eyes lit up with an idea.

He sat himself down on the toilet - seat down - and pushed his astral form out from the confines of his body. He stretched his arms out, shrugging off the shackles of flesh and bone, and then floated through the wall and into the depths of the hospital.

He was not so lucky as to be floating through his own hospital that he worked in all the years ago, however, he was aware of the best places to find top secret paperwork. He immediately went to the reception desk.

He flipped through papers and leaflets, books and folders, filing cabinets and desk drawers, but he found not even a hint of any of the patients that had died on the operating table after a lethal dose of anaesthetic. Remembering their names were child’s play - Rowan Osborne; Karla Jones; Tim Atkinson, and Glen Carroll - it was finding them that was giving him trouble. With an irritated sigh that expelled from his mouth in a cloud of moondust and comet trails, he leaned back from the drawer that he was rustling through. He ran his hands through his hair of nothing and wracked his brain of where he could find more paperwork.

His own hospital shredded paperwork that they didn’t need anymore. But before that, it was piled in a store cupboard.

‘Fantastic…’ he mumbled to himself as he set to floating through the hundreds of rooms in search of paper.

He passed through several cupboards that were full of cleaning items; private patient rooms; laboratories, and the occasional staff room. But he could find no precious paperwork anywhere - at least not what he was interested in. He was searching through some newspapers left behind in what looked to be a canteen of sorts - because who knew what lengths some places would go to when it came to hiding things? - when the door creaked open.

Immediately, he let the papers drop back onto the counter and he floated up to the top of the fridge and managed to crunch himself into the small pace. In walked a man and a woman, both dressed to the nines in their best suit and dress respectively. They sat down and started some idle conversation, none of which was very interesting to Stephen, though he stayed just in case he could pick up any vital information that their alcohol-loose mouths may drop.

And then he heard his name.

‘So, you saw that Stephen Strange guy?’ the man questioned.

‘Why would he bother to show up? He’s not a doctor anymore, he hasn’t been for years,’ the woman replied.

‘Not with those ugly hands. I wouldn’t trust him with a soup spoon, let alone a scalpel.’

The comment was met with the laugh of a shattered glass from the woman, jagged points pressing against the back of Stephen’s eyes. ‘He never was much to look at, was he?’

‘His eyes are too far apart, it’s like he’s trying to look in two different directions at once.’

‘Don’t forget his neck.’

‘It would suit a giraffe more than him.’ 

‘And I bet he grew that goatee to try and hide his lack of a chin.’

‘He probably did it to try and look like Tony Stark.’ 

‘Now that’s an attractive man!’

Stephen felt his heart stop, and the glass pressed into his eyes harder still. He felt the magnetic pull of his body calling out to him, to hold him in a comforting hug away from these venomous people with their cruel words. He let himself go, let himself fall back through the walls and the floors and the chairs back into the bathroom and back into his body.

When he was surrounded once more by bone and cartilage, tendons and muscles, blood and organs, he sank his teeth into his bottom lip as he tried to push back the oncoming tears. He pushed and pushed like a man trying to roll a stone up a hill. But his grip slipped and the rocky tears came tumbling down anyway, spilling from his eyes with the force of a lion ripping at his throat.

He wanted to run. He wanted to get so far away from that place that he couldn’t remember what it looked like. Curse his photographic memory. He could remember every word, had repeated them in his head over a thousand times.  _ His eyes are too far apart. He never was much to look at, was he? I wouldn’t trust him with a soup spoon.  _ Each word that floated into his ear and settled in his skull made the tears flow from his eyes with more aggression and violence. Undiscovered galaxies stained with a fierce red shed their pearlescent droplets of stardust onto his sharpened cheekbones, pooling in the goatee upon his jaw.  _ Tony’s goatee. The one that he had copied. _ He wasn’t original. He stole everything; all his ideas, his appearance, he was terrible, a terrible person. He stole a damn infinity stone of all things. God, he was repulsive. He didn’t deserve any of the powers he had or any of the friends he had. If only his car crash had been listed as fatal, his time of death noted down upon the discovery of his car upended in the ditch.

The thought invaded his head like an arrow leased from an archer’s bow. It shook him to his very core, his breath hitching and his arms wrapping around himself. He had only been called ugly; that was nothing, what did he have to complain about? His hands? He had been doing that for months and it hadn’t gotten him anywhere, so what was the point?

He bit his lip and reached up shaking fingers to his face to wipe away the tears. He stilled as he heard the door to the bathroom open and then swing shut. He heard footsteps. They were coming towards his stall. Oh, no. Someone would need to use the toilet. Someone had come to check up on him. Someone was  _ there _ .

There was a knock on the door. His heart rate leapt, like a mountain goat up a cliff face. 

‘Stephen, baby?’

He knew that voice. It was Tony.

‘Are you alright? I noticed that you’d been in here for ages. And the mic was picking up what sounded like crying?’

He had forgotten the mic that had been hooked to his tie, concealed as a tie clasp.

He sniffled and poked at the clasp. ‘Sorry…’ he mumbled.

‘No, babe! If you’re upset, then that’s okay! Just talk to me? What’s got you like this?’ the engineer said. From underneath the stall door, Stephen could see that Tony had sat down outside.

‘I heard some… comments.’

‘What kind of comments?’

‘About… how I look.’

‘Was it about how handsome you look in that suit? How sexy and delicious and beaut-’

Stephen cut Tony off with a sob as the tears came fresh once more.

‘Were they…?’ he continued. ‘No. They couldn’t have been anything bad, surely! You’re gorgeous, what are they talking about?’

So, through tear-streaked mumbles, the doctor told the mechanic what he had done to get himself in the room in the first place, what he had heard.

‘I’ll get them fired,’ Tony snarled, ‘they’ll rue the day they spoke badly about my lovely boyfriend.’

‘No, Tony… don’t.’

‘They deserve it!’

‘They don’t.’

There was a disagreeable silence, where Tony stewed and Stephen sniffled. It was broken by a defeated sigh and the mechanic’s plea for his wizard to open the door and cuddle him. Stephen didn’t need asking twice. The door was unlocked and the sorcerer crawled into Tony’s arms and buried his face into the smaller man’s chest.

‘Don’t listen to them,’ Tony whispered into Stephen’s white-winged hair, ‘they clearly have no taste if they’re saying things that aren’t true about you.’

The mage grumbled. ‘But they are true,’ he said, ‘my eyes  _ are  _ a little far apart. My neck  _ is  _ long.’

‘I guess, but that doesn’t mean that you’re ugly,’ the mechanic said, ‘not everyone finds the same person attractive, and by no means is it a measure of their character. It is no reason whatsoever to hate someone.’

Stephen nodded, wordlessly.

‘Promise you won’t start worrying about it?’

‘I promise.’ 

He would worry about it, because he was human. But he learned not to let it get to him. He learned to ignore the comments, to find comfort in the fact that Tony found his attractive and that was what mattered, not the opinion of a complete stranger.

And a few days later, the corrupt doctor was discovered and arrested, so it all turned out okay in the end.


End file.
